When John McCain said we could just 'muddle through' in Afghanistan, I argued for more resources and more troops to finish the fight against the terrorists who actually attacked us on 9/11, and made clear that we must take out Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants if we have them in our sights," Barack Obama thundered as he accepted the Democratic nomination for president in Denver last year. "John McCain likes to say that he'll follow bin Laden to the gates of Hell. But he won't even go to the cave where he lives."

It was a shabby bit of rhetoric, even for a campaign. Insinuating that McCain, of all people, didn't have the intestinal fortitude to take the fight to bin Laden was not only absurd on its face, it smacked of overcompensation coming from the former community organizer whose greatest foreign policy passion prior to his presidential bid had been nuclear disarmament.

But the line did what it needed to do: communicate that Obama had the sort of true grit required to fight the good, i.e. popular, war in Afghanistan. That war may or may not be good anymore, but it is most certainly not popular. And so what was for Obama a "war of necessity" has become a de facto war of choice. At least that's the sense one gets as the president is suddenly searching for a politically palatable strategy other than the one he announced months ago.

Now, I think it would amount to both breathtaking cynicism and, far worse, bad policy for Obama to abandon Afghanistan to the Taliban and al-Qaida. That goes for the "Biden plan," which would amount to little better than a public relations effort whereby we would score regular symbolic victories while steadily losing the war.

But if it's sincere, I welcome Obama's willingness to rethink his position on an issue in which he invested so much political capital and machismo.

Obama came into office swearing he was a pragmatist who would support any approach that worked. He liked to invoke Franklin Roosevelt as his lodestar, for Roosevelt championed "bold, persistent experimentation." Discussing the economy, Obama told "60 Minutes": "What you see in FDR that I hope my team can emulate is not always getting it right but projecting a sense of confidence and a willingness to try things and experiment in order to get people working again."

That spirit has been woefully lacking in Obama's presidency so far. During the campaign, Obama's top domestic priorities were reform of health care, education and energy. When an economic crisis that is — according to Obama, at least — second only to the Depression exploded in front of him, Obama the alleged pragmatist concluded that, mirabile dictu, his year-old agenda was the perfect solution.

Obama insisted that as president of both "red" and "blue" America, he was open to ideas from both sides of the aisle. But his stimulus bill was as partisan and one-sided as Democrats claimed George W. Bush's tax cuts were. At least Bush's tax cuts actually cut taxes. It remains to be seen whether Obama's stimulus stimulated anything at all.

After ending the war in Iraq and taking the fight to bin Laden's cave, direct engagement with the Iranian regime was candidate Obama's greatest foreign policy priority. Partly this stemmed from the fact that he accidentally suggested in a debate that he would meet with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad without preconditions. Rather than admit he was wrong, Obama stuck to his idee fixe throughout the campaign.

Since being elected, it seems that his off-the-cuff slipup wasn't that off the cuff. Despite an ever-increasing number of lies, subterfuges and outrages on the part of the Iranians, the Obama administration has seemed convinced that they can be talked into compliance with the so-called international community.

But the optimist can look at Obama's newfound open-mindedness on Afghanistan and his potential orchestration of international sanctions against Iran as proof that reality is prying him from his ideological cocoon.

Alas, there's another way of reading recent events. Critics always claimed that Obama was a very left-wing fellow who was never the centrist he claimed to be. The pessimist might suspect that Obama's newfound pragmatism only manifests itself when it permits him to abandon the centrist positions that may have helped him get elected but are of no use to him politically anymore. What seemed like principled centrism in 2008 might simply be exposed as left-wing expediency in 2009.

Here's hoping the optimists are right.

Source

“I do not believe that the president is taking the leadership that is incumbent upon an American president, which we have throughout modern history, and that is to advocate for human rights and freedom, and free elections are one of those fundamentals,” McCain said during an interview on CNN.

McCain said the president “obviously doesn’t agree” that Iranians have the right to protest the election results as a “fundamental principle.”

“We are seeking, as we have throughout the world, a free and fair election. This is obviously one that is corrupted,” the Republican senator said.

(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com …

1)  We got this the old-fashioned way: we earned it.  The other side took the fight to us, and we never took the fight to the other side, except coyly and obliquely.  That's not a mistake we should make the next time.  "Honorable campaigns" are for losers.  Next time, call 'em as they really are, not as you wish to see 'em.

2)  Where was Bush?  Once again, and right to the bitter end, he let his passion for "loyalty" supersede what was stragetically right for the party, not to mention what was best for the country.  I think his reputation has nowhere to go but down; yes, he got one big thing right,
but he got everything else wrong.   Enough of this family in our
country's politics!

3)  Good riddance to Liddy Dole, the woman who gave us the national  drinking age of 21 and a host of sozzled underage college students.  She won't be missed.

4)  Hillary comes out smelling like a rose, plus unbloodied.  She and Bill are already scoping out 2012.

5)  Time to clean house.  McCain should have been president in 2000, not in 2008.  No more "it's my turn"  for the last loser.  We need to be looking for our candidates in the ranks of returning war vets — think Eisenhower in '52 as the model — and let the Dem's shifty lawyers run the country for a couple of years.  Then hit them across the board with  people who know how to lead.   Gen. Petraeus might be a good place to start.  Lots of junior officers, too.

6)  You know what?  McCain never did sell himself as a leader.  He sold himself as a maverick.

7)  One upside: McCain/Feingold is now dead, as is public financing.  Talk about being hoist with your own petard!

8)  That Gang of 14 thing really worked out well, didn't it?  Say good-bye to the courts.  And we were so close…

9)  Joe Lieberman was worse than useless.  When he could have made a difference, he didn't cross the aisle to caucus with the Republicans. 
Now, it doesn't matter.  Thanks, Joe.

10)  Age matters.  McCain ran an "honorable campaign" because he never really understood in his heart that the other guy had no intention of doing so; he didn't "get" Obama's generation, or Axelrod's..  Obama would lie about public financing, "oppose" gay marriage but also oppose Prop. 8 and never see it as morally contradictory.  The world that McCain understood and operated in is vanishing, and tonight is visible evidence.

11)  Unlike the Democrats, let's show some class in defeat.  That doesn't mean lie down and roll over: it means fighting for what we believe in, doubly so now.  But their sneering childishness is not for us; and now that they've won, they won't be able to control it even in victory.  This is an unlovely party filled with unlovely people, as America's about to find out once the Obama pixie dust wears off.

12)  Understand, once and for all, that the old media is part of the Democratic Party now.  Ignore it.  Never send Michele Bachmann onto Hardball again.  Never send Sarah to play nice with Katie.  We need to develop and create our own work-arounds — Fox, talk radio, NRO, etc. — and use them.  Don't play by their rules: make our own.

Source:  National Review

Sure, chances of Republicans retaining the White House are remote.

But some last-minute state polls show the GOP nominee closing the gap in key states — Republican turf of Virginia, Florida and Ohio among them, and Democratic-leaning Pennsylvania, too.

If the tightening polls are correct and undecided voters in those states break McCain's way — both big ifs — that could make for a repeat of the 2000 heartbreaker for Democrats that gave Republicans the White House.

In 2000, Democrat Al Gore narrowly won the popular vote by 537,179 votes. But George W. Bush won the state-by-state electoral balloting that determines the presidency, 271 to 266. The outcome wasn't clear until a 36-day recount awarded Florida, then worth 25 electoral votes, to Bush by just a 537-vote margin.

Before the 2000 election, political insiders had speculated just the opposite, that perhaps Bush would win the popular vote but lose the presidency to Gore.

One day before the 2008 election, Obama sat atop every national poll.

Enthusiastic by all measures, the Illinois senator's Democratic base was expected to run up the score in liberal bastions of party strongholds such as New York and California.

But the race appeared to be naturally tightening in top battlegrounds that each candidate likely will need to help them reach the magic number in the Electoral College, electoral-rich Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia among them.

To win, McCain must hold on to most states that went to Bush in 2004, or pick up one or more that went to Democrat John Kerry four years ago to make up for any losses. McCain's biggest target for a pickup is Pennsylvania, which offers 21 votes and where several public polls show Obama's lead shrinking from double digits to single digits.

McCain faces a steep hurdle. Obama leads or is tied in a dozen or so Bush-won states, and has the advantage in most Kerry-won states.

The Republican's campaign argues that as national surveys tighten, McCain's standing in key states also rises and that, combined with get-out-the-vote efforts, will lift McCain to victory in Bush states and, perhaps, others.

"What we're in for is a slam-bang finish. … He's been counted out before and won these kinds of states, and we're in the process of winning them right now," Rick Davis, McCain's campaign manager, said Sunday.

Obama's team is awash in confidence.

"We think we have a decisive edge right now" in states Bush won four years ago, said David Plouffe, Obama's campaign manager.

There's still another possibility, perhaps more improbable than the first — that McCain wins the popular vote while Obama clinches the White House.

True, Democrats have been fired up all year.

True, Republicans haven't been.

True, Obama and McCain have been faring about even among independent voters.

But there are signs that the GOP's conservative base has rallied in the final stretch and these voters usually turn out in droves, even if lukewarm on the candidate.

Then there's the question of a tie in the Electoral College. In that case, members of the next House would select the winner.

If Obama carries every state that Democrat John Kerry won in 2004, plus Iowa, New Mexico and Nevada, then he and McCain each would have 269 electoral votes. A tie also would result if McCain takes New Hampshire from the Democrats' column but loses Iowa, New Mexico and another state that Bush won, Colorado.

In an election year that's defied conventional wisdom time and again, anything can happen.

Source:  Newsmax

In a recent posting, I went on the record to say that John McCain should win the presidential election Tuesday, and I listed five reasons which lead me to this conclusion. They are media bias, pollster oversampling of Democrats, Obama campaign hubris, the Democrat candidate's many suspect associations and the fact that the American electorate has a center-right majority.

There is a sixth reason to believe that the GOP candidate will pull this one out of the fire, and, like the other five, it is a topic you won't read much about in the newspapers or see on the alphabet television networks, all of which are in the tank for Obama. It's the PUMA factor.

PUMA is an acronym which stands for Party Unity My *ss. Backers of Sen. Hillary Clinton formed this "un-party" when they felt their candidate got a raw deal in the race for the Democrat Party's presidential nomination. In their view, party chairman Howard Dean and the Obama campaign conspired to prevent Sen. Clinton from winning the contest. They did not jump ship at the time, however, and most of them could have been persuaded to back Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign. All Obama needed to do to secure their support was to name Sen. Clinton as his running mate, a course of action many of his advisors had recommended.

Obama, however, would have none of that. Showing his thin skin over some of the remarks Sen. Clinton had made about him in the rough and tumble of the primary contest, Obama, who saw eye to eye with his wife Michelle on the matter, rejected Clinton and invited Sen. Joe Biden instead to join him on the ticket. The decision left many scratching their heads. Biden had a long-held reputation for his runaway mouth, and his highly-toouted foreign policy expertise has been tarnished by such bad thinking as sending, no strings attached, a $200 Million check to Iran as a sign of America's good will, partitioning Iraq along sectarian and ethnic lines and some other really bad ideas. A Clinton selection would have made the Democrat ticket a formidable one, and, in the opinion of many political junkies, one which would have been hard for John McCain to beat. As a result, Obama finds himself just days before the election, in a year when a Democrat sweep was supposed to be a sure thing, unable to close the deal and locked in a very close race with McCain.

In years past, political candidates have made peace with their primary opponents, no matter how bitter the primary struggle or how far apart they may have been on both style and substance, to form unity tickets which rolled on to victory. John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson did it, as did Ronald W. Reagan and George H.W. Bush. But Obama, who has repeatedly shown that he cannot take the sort of criticism that his campaign regularly dishes out, failed to rise to the occasion. This failure to bury the hatchet and get on with the business of winning an election was a fatal mistake. Obama made some enemies who will not forgive nor forget. Although Sen. Clinton has made a public show of support for the Obama campaign, this is not true of many of her supporters. As payback for what they see as misogyny and pettiness toward Clinton, they have committed themselves to the effort to elect his opponent.

There are many PUMA sites on the web, too many to try to link to here. But a good start would be to go here and here. PUMAs have also joined with other disaffected Democrats, independents and Republicans in forming associations opposed to Obama. These are the "NOBAMA" coalitions, some of which can be found on the internet here and here. The hottest of all the many PUMA web addresses is this one: Hillbuzz.com.

The big question is how many PUMAs are there among the electorate? Not all of the 18 million who voted for Sen. Clinton in the primaries will vote for John McCain. But it is difficult to pin down the exact number of those who will mark their ballots for the Republican. This is because many of them are intentionally concealing this fact by telling pollsters when called that they will vote for Obama, although their intention is clearly to vote against him, i.e., for McCain. Others from their ranks are telling the pollsters that they are independent and undecided. Still others will say outright that they are going to vote for McCain. If this seems somewhat confusing, that is the general idea – don't give the Obama campaign's oppo people any useful intel.

The Associated Press estimates that four in ten of what they call "persuadables" are voters who are counted as undecided but had voted for Sen. Clinton in the primaries. In recent national polls, Obama had the support of 88% of Democrats. How many of those are stealth PUMAs on the prowl is anyone's guess. But what should be even more troubling for the Obama campaign can be found in the internals of the latest Rassmussen poll of Pennsylvania. Obama is only drawing 75% of that state's Democrats. The junior senator from Illinois cannot win the Keystone State with that much softness in his base support.

Each state is unique, of course, and you can't transplant trends from one state into another or carry them over to the national picture as assumptions. But if McCain can pick up four or five of every seven undecideds, and if just two or three percent of those who say they will vote for Obama actually mark their ballots the other way (which would account for the stealth PUMAs and those who are afraid to say they are for McCain for fear of being branded as "racist"), he will win this election.

In just a few days, the roar of the wildcats known as PUMAs may be a very loud one indeed. Add to it the responsive chord struck by Joe the Plumber, who has made many blue collar workers, with their upwardly mobile dreams of owning their own small businesses some day, step out of the shadows. Add also the resounding sound of a previously unexcited conservative base which Sarah Palin has single-handedly mobilized, and John McCain could be hearing some sweet music Tuesday night.

Source:  RedState

The double-digit leads Barack Obama held last week have evaporated, as all three of the top tracking polls (the most current and reliable measurements out there) show McCain hot on Obama's heels.

Zogby had Obama ahead by 12 points last week — now it's down to 4. His margin in the Rasmussen poll has dropped from 8 points to 3 in the last few days. Gallup shows only a 2-point difference.

In each news cycle, Obama is on the defensive — staving off accusations of closet socialism and trying to wriggle out of his once overt advocacy of income redistribution. "Spreading the wealth around" has become the anti-Obama slogan and might become the epitaph for his candidacy, just as "brainwashed" was for George Romney and "Where's the beef?" was for Gary Hart.

Then, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's image is returning to haunt Obama. Yes, McCain refused to use the issue in his own campaign, but independent groups like goptrust.com are using funds from tens of thousands of individual donors to run ads featuring Wright and his relationship with Obama.

Just yesterday, a tape surfaced in which Obama described the Rev. Wright as "the best the black church has to offer."

The double dose of Obama's support for spreading the wealth around and his affiliation with the toxic Rev. Wright are eroding his once-formidable lead.

If the stock market doesn't send us all into shock again, the election could be very close with the undecided vote looming large. The key question is, About whom are they undecided?

At the height of the financial crisis, voters couldn't decide if McCain was really a maverick or just a Bush clone. But the spotlight has shifted: It's no longer McCain who is caught in its glare, but Obama.

As the Democrat moved convincingly ahead last week, voters began to seriously consider what kind of president he'd be. Bush and McCain seemed increasingly irrelevant as people pondered whether they really want to trust Obama with this kind of power.

By this point, the nature of the undecided vote has likely shifted from people who are torn between wanting change and worrying about Obama, to people who have basically decided not to back Barack but haven't sufficiently collected their thoughts to come out for McCain.

Then there's the so-called Bradley effect, where white voters lie to pollsters and say they are backing the black candidate when they're not.

To date, it's been a myth: As The Wall Street Journal reported, Tom Bradley had lost his lead in the polls by the time California voted on his bid to become governor. But it may be real this year.

Undecided voters may be reluctant to say they're not voting for Obama. They may be concealing their real intentions by saying they're undecided. (They might even not have come to grips with their intentions themselves.)

High turnout may also be a wild card. On the surface, it seems sure to bolster Obama's chances as large numbers of poorer, less educated, younger, and minority voters turn out to vote for the first time.

But the swelling turnout may have gone beyond this social outreach. And, as it does, it can help McCain. After all, white voters back McCain by double digits. If the contest inspires them all to vote, Obama will lose.

So we approach Election Day with the possibility of a rerun of 2000 plainly before us.

McCain has closed to a point where the race will likely be very, very close — and we'll have to stay up very, very late on election night.

Source:  Dick Morris

The NY POST, WASHINGTON TIMES and DALLAS MORNING NEWS have all been told to move out by Sunday to make room for network bigwigs — and possibly for the inclusion of reporters from two black magazines, ESSENCE and JET, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

Despite pleas from top editors of the three newspapers that have covered the campaign for months at extraordinary cost, the Obama campaign says their reporters — and possibly others — will have to vacate their coveted seats so more power players can document the final days of Sen. Barack Obama's historic campaign to become the first black American president.

MORE

Some told the DRUDGE REPORT that the reporters are being ousted to bring on documentary film-makers to record the final days; others expect to see on board more sympathetic members of the media, including the NY TIMES' Maureen Dowd, who once complained that she was barred from McCain's Straight Talk Express airplane.

After a week of quiet but desperate behind-the-scenes negotiations, the reporters of the three papers heard last night that they were definitely off for the final swing. They are already planning how to cover the final days by flying commercial or driving from event to event.

Developing…

Source:  Drudge Report

If you’re expecting some hard-hitting advertising from Team McCain in the final few days before the election, this will disappoint.  The entire ad consists of Barack Obama talking about the McCain-Lieberman bill on global warming, offering his support:

(Excerpt) Read More Here